- Commentary -

December 10, 2009 (FinancialWire) (By Bob Farley) — A popular spam claims that the government is getting ready to tax the Internet, which like the mythical water-powered car is probably true but nobody’s going to admit it. What is true is that pay-TV services like Comcast (OTC: CMCSA) (OTC: CMCSK) are going to try to stop–or at least greatly limit–the world from watching their products for free on sites like Hulu.com. And with the recent offer from Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) to buy music-streamer Lala.com, another blow to free music looks to be in the offing.

Granted, subscription-based companies need to charge something to survive, but why do they have to stifle free use? How much do a few Internet watchers watching last week’s shows really hurt them? Do the big providers really think that blocking the current free services is really going to help them all that much? How much more likely is it that those alienated users will turn into Big Business haterz and continue their search for free offerings wherever they happen to pop up.

NBC and Fox started Hulu.com, which became way too successful, some say, and now Comcast, the cable giant, wants to buy in. Do you think they’re going to continue to offer free shows to Internet users while charging their paying customers to watch on television? Call me skeptical.

On the other hand, many people who get a taste of the free offerings just might make the splurge for the cable service.

If cable and satellite providers ever got smart enough to offer a la carte channels, they might find an audience eager to buy three or four channels they’d watch rather than 60 channels they don’t need plus the few they want. Or how about this: If you buy three channels, you get 20 freebies; four channels, 40 freebies; etc. Dream on.

[Go to http://www.financialwire.net/?s=bob+farley to see more commentaries and articles by Bob Farley.]

The FirstAlert(tm) Economics Calendar lists International Trade Balance for October (8:30 am), Initial Jobless Claims (8:30 a.m.), Treasury auctions 30-year bonds (1 p.m.), Treasury Budget Statement for November (2 p.m.).

The FirstAlert(tm) Events Calendar showcases AVID, ASTI at Bloomberg Tradebook and Brigantine Advisors Tech Trends Conference; ESLR at Macquarie Wind & Solar Technology Conference; GE, ROK, CKP, WSO at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Industries Conference; OMI 2010 Financial Outlook Meeting; XPO, API, RBC, WYY at Lambert Edwards & Associates SMID-West Stock Conference.

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Quote of the Day: Maybe where there’s clarity of air, there’s clarity of thought. Chet Huntley

Today is: International Human Rights Day

Happy Birthday: Isaac Beeckman, Carl Gustav Jakob Jacobi, Emily Dickinson, Chet Huntley, Dorothy Lamour, Dan Blocker, Mako, Susan Dey.

Today in History: Martin Luther burned his copy of the papal bull Exsurge Domine outside Wittenberg’s Elster Gate in 1520. Isaac Newton’s derivation of Kepler’s laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, was read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley in 1684. Mississippi became the 20th U.S. state in 1817. The first traffic lights were installed outside the Houses of Parliament in London in 1868. Wyoming granted women the right to vote in 1869, a right they were asked to abdicate in the Doris Day movie The Ballad of Josie. Women were given the right to vote in Tasmania in 1902. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize of any kind. Jim Hart threw a football for a record 98 yards in 1971, the longest recorded throw.

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